


Follow Your Heart

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Jokes, M/M, Shiro Is A Disaster, Team Feels, background Allura/Lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-16 22:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15447162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "It occurs to me," said Coran, "that I actually don't know very much about Earthling romance!"





	Follow Your Heart

"It occurs to me," said Coran, "that I actually don't know very much about Earthling romance!"

Shiro blinked. Then he said, "Is there someone you've got your eye on, Coran?"

"What? Well, no, though I suppose hope springs eternal! No, I was thinking of it more in an _academic_ way, Shiro. Purely disinterested curiosity. It's what makes us Alteans such great scientists, you know!"

Shiro guessed this was probably about Allura and Lance. He could be reassuring. "I'm happy to answer your questions," he said with a smile.

"Well," said Coran, "I know you _have_ romance. Many species don't! But humans seem to be quite committed to romantic pair bonding, and even quite open minded about it, if Lance is anything to go by, ha ha!"

"That's right," said Shiro, increasingly sure that this was Coran looking out for Allura.

"Now – forgive me if this is too personal – _how_ many genders, exactly?" Coran peered at him with interest.

"It depends who you ask," said Shiro. "At least three, I suppose. Men, women, and some people who are neither."

"Interesting! Very interesting! And those genders are attracted to…"

"Depends on the person," Shiro said. "Everyone's individual. Some people like men, some people like women, some like neither, some like a range of different things."

"Do you know, that's rather like the Galra," said Coran. "They are of course a species famed for their romantic adaptability! It's _one_ of the things that made them so successful as they spread across the galaxy, though I doubt the Galran Empire would like to admit it now. Most Galra are capable of attraction to members of any sentient species and any gender – though individuals do all have their range of preference, haha!"

"…right," said Shiro.

"In fact the Galra can even _breed_ with members of any species, provided at least one person in the romantic relationship is able to become pregnant!"

"I did know that," said Shiro. Coran could get carried away explaining things to people sometimes. Shiro gently reminded him, "I have _met_ Keith. And Krolia."

"Mhm, yes, of course you have. However," said Coran, "it would be the height of irresponsibility for any of the Paladins to become pregnant at this critical juncture of the war. Wouldn't you agree!" His smile was actually a little bit manic. "In fact, I would go so far as to say that it's very important to use protection whenever you have sexual intercourse!"

"Shouldn't you be having this conversation with Allura, Coran?" said Shiro. He knew he was blushing slightly. "I can speak to Lance about it as well, if you'd like. But I don't think we need to worry. I'm not sure they're even… well, I don’t think their relationship has progressed that far." In fact Shiro wasn't really sure they were in a _relationship_ at all. There was something going on, but it didn't seem to be all that clearly defined. "In any case," he pointed out, hoping to reassure Coran, "neither of them is Galra."

"What?" said Coran, looking genuinely flummoxed. "Allura? Lance? No, I meant Keith."

Shiro blinked. Then he laughed. "Keith is male," he explained, "biologically. You don't need to worry about him getting pregnant."

Coran's jaw dropped. He stared at Shiro.

"Do you mean Earthling _females_ bear the children?" he said. He paused. He frowned. "And what's all this about Allura and Lance?"

 

Well, that was a fun conversation. Shiro still didn't entirely understand why Coran had come to him to – express his worries about Keith getting pregnant? Wow, there was a sentence Shiro had never expected to think. But it wasn't as if Shiro could gently take Keith aside to advise him about it anyway. He wasn't the one Keith looked up to these days. He wasn't the team leader. Things were different now.

In any case as far as Shiro knew Keith wasn't _with_ anyone, so Coran's worries really had come completely out of nowhere. He excused himself as soon as Coran seemed calm again and retreated to the kitchen, where he made himself a sandwich. The food goo on the Castle of Lions had been fine, but Shiro had not realised quite how much he'd missed sandwiches. Hunk had even stocked the kitchen with a range of fancy chutneys. Shiro hesitated between chilli and onion. Maybe both?

"Shiro! Hi!" said Lance. "What are you doing?"

"Making a sandwich," said Shiro.

"Why are you staring at the chutneys when you're just going to have the same thing you always have?"

"Hey," said Shiro, narrowing his eyes.

"Tuna and mayo, right?"

That did sound good, actually. Shiro went and got a tin of tuna out of the cupboard.

"Like clockwork," said Lance smugly.

Shiro said, "You can mock me if you want, Lance, but this is going to be a really good sandwich."

"No judgment, none at all, this is a judgment-free zone," Lance said, holding up his hands. "Oh, that does look good, actually."

Ten minutes later they were both sitting at the breakfast bar with matching tuna sandwiches. "This is delicious," said Lance, only he said it through a mouthful so it came out more like _delifuff._ Shiro laughed.

"So, it's cool I ran into you," Lance said, when he'd inhaled two sandwiches, "because I was kind of hoping to talk to you about something! Speaking of, you know, judgment-free zones. I wanted to talk about something, non-judgmentally."

"Go ahead, Lance," said Shiro. "I'm always going to be here for you, you know that. We're team."

Lance looked up at him with big eyes and then said, "Oh _man_ ," and scrubbed his hand frantically across his eyes. "And my hands were all tuna-mayo-y so now my face is too," he said accusingly. "No one told me this emotional maturity thing meant I was gonna be crying all the time."

"I'm sorry –"

"No apologising! Just, you'd _better_ always be here for me," said Lance. "All right? No take-backs. Anyway! I just wanted to say – no, wait, I have note cards."

"You have _note cards_ ," repeated Shiro.

"Like I said, emotional maturity is new for me," said Lance. "I wrote stuff down so I'd say it right. Ahem!"

He pulled a set of cards out of his pocket and read off the top one, " _My friend, you have been part of this whole crazy Voltron thing since the beginning."_

"Lance," said Shiro.

"Shh! We're having a bro moment, don't interrupt," said Lance, and flipped to the next card. " _Things haven't always been easy,_ " he read, and kept reading, flipping through the cards. " _But I want you to know that our friendship is important to me,_ blah blah, _you deserve to be happy –_ I underlined that one, look – _and Red'll back me up on this, so even though we used to fight all the time, and we can still be dicks to each other even now, when it comes to love and speaking as an intergalactic romantic hero –_ did you know there's a TV show on Olkarion starring a guy who's clearly meant to be me and all the cute alien girls he meets? – _Keith, I think you should_ – oh, hey, wait." Lance frowned. "These are the wrong note cards."

Shiro said, "I did try to tell you."

"Hang on," said Lance, digging frantically through his pockets till he fished out another set. "Is this it? _I just want you to know I respect you more than anyone else I've ever met, and I didn't know that was part of love but it turns out that it really –_ uh, no, those are," he was blushing a dull red, "something else. Wait, Shiro, I definitely made some for you, maybe I left them in my room?"

"I'm honoured," said Shiro. "But what if you just said what you think? I promise to keep this a judgment-free zone, if there's something you need to tell me."

"Ugggh," said Lance. "Okay, okay, fine. I'll just say it. Listen." He took a deep breath. "I know you've been kind of sad and it sucks and I get it but sometimes you've just got to get over yourself and believe in love and follow your heart!" he said, all in one breath.

"Lance," said Shiro. "I don't –"

"Yeah, that's it!" Lance said. "No judgment! Going now! Thanks for the sandwiches!"

"Lance," said Shiro, but Lance had fled before he could say, _what?_

 

"Did you do something to Lance?" said Hunk when he came into the kitchen. "He just ran past me."

Shiro shook his head. "We had a weird conversation. I think he's a bit worked up about the whole –"

"- Allura thing, right, we'll all be glad when they get _that_ resolved one way or another," Hunk said. Then he saw the plates. "Oh man, Shiro, all the glories of Earth cuisine at your fingertips and _still_ tuna and mayo? It's a classic, but you could take a risk once in a while, you know?"

"It's comfort food," Shiro said.

Hunk scratched the back of his head. "You, uh, feel like you need comforting?"

"No," Shiro said.

"Okay, good," said Hunk. He started pulling snacks out of the fridge and arranging them on a tray. Hunk was incapable of serving up food half-heartedly. "These are for Pidge, we're still working on the new training facility, she won't move to the food so the food's gotta come to her."

"How's it progressing?" Shiro asked.

"Oh, really good, _really_ good," Hunk said, and then went off into a flow of words of which Shiro understood about one in three but the upshot seemed to be "- so yeah, we just need someone to run tests with the program while we work out the knotty bits in action."

"Can I help?" Shiro said. "I'm at a loose end today."

"That'd be great!" said Hunk. "Here, take this." He passed Shiro the tray of snacks. "I was wondering how I was gonna carry everything."

They had a tray each when they walked back down to the new training facilities. "Hunk," said Shiro, giving in to curiosity, "is Keith seeing someone?"

Hunk startled and nearly dropped his tray. "What? Um, no, not as far as I know – why do you ask?"

"Lance and Coran both said some things that made me think – anyway."

"Keith isn't seeing anyone," said Hunk, more confidently. "When would he have time? Between leading Voltron and doing all his mysterious sword stuff with his mom and all the time he spends with _you_ – not to mention brooding time, ha – and, like, walking his magic alien wolf dog – " Hunk paused. "Man, when did Keith get so cool? Is Keith cooler than the rest of us? I feel like Keith might be cooler than the rest of us."

"Have you heard him sing?" Shiro said.

Hunk snorted. "Right. Not _that_ cool. Thanks, I feel better."

Shiro nodded. They went on in silence a bit, and there were some stairs so Shiro concentrated on not spilling his overloaded tray of snacks, and then – like poking your tongue at a sore tooth – he heard himself say, "So he's not seeing anyone?"

"I don't think so. Wouldn't you be the first to know, Shiro?" Hunk said. "Keith trusts you more than anyone."

Shiro looked away. "Of course, right," he said.

He saw out of the corner of his eye Hunk look at him, and look at him again, and then pull some sort of face. He didn't try to ask about it. He didn't really want to know what Hunk was thinking just then.

 

Pidge was deep in the code, spread across three displays with the original Castle of Lions designs up on the fourth. She reached out and took a tortilla chip off Shiro's tray and dunked it in the dip on the far side of Hunk's without looking round and then shoved the whole thing into her mouth in one bite. "Hey, Pidge! Shiro's come to help us run tests!" said Hunk.

"Perfect timing," said Pidge, without taking her eyes off the displays. "Give me two minutes to finish this and then we'll put you in it and see if we can get the invisible maze working."

"Sounds good," said Shiro.

"So, uh, Pidge," said Hunk, wearing what he probably thought was an expression of great cunning. Shiro winced pre-emptively. "Shiro and I were just talking, and maybe _you_ know – do you think Keith is, like, interested in anyone? Romantically? Right now?" He nudged her.

"Nope," said Pidge.

Hunk spluttered. "Pidge!"

"Nope, I'm not doing this," said Pidge. "Got actual work to do, not interested in anyone's romantic drama today. If you want to know what Keith's thinking, why don't you just ask Keith? Later. Once we've finished setting up this _incredibly cool training facility_." She hit a key and down in the long training suite a shining maze coalesced out of nothingness, gleamed for a moment, and then vanished. "One invisible maze," she said. "Hand-designed by yours truly, and an _upgrade_ on the old one because now the walls can _move_."

Hunk said, " _Awesome_."

"Tell me where you need me," said Shiro.

Pidge grinned up at him. "You run the maze, Hunk'll call it, and I'll debug."

 

Shiro spent the rest of that afternoon in the training suite. Pidge had somehow come up with an easy mode which meant that instead of getting an electric shock when you hit one of the maze walls, you felt like someone was tickling you. The moving walls turned out to be slightly erratic, so Hunk kept calling too late and Shiro spent half the afternoon in fits of laughter. Some of it was from the tickling and some of it was just from hearing Hunk frantic over the speaker yelling, "Left – right – no, other right! Sorry Shiro!" while Pidge made fun of him mercilessly.

Once they'd got the hang of it Pidge wanted to test the automaton function at the same time, so Shiro was trying to duck and dodge through the maze while also duelling a robot. It was good. Shiro needed the practice – he was still getting used to his body again, relearning his own movement and balance, and the new Altean-tech-infused arm prosthetic was lighter than the old one and less deadly. But it was also just _fun_. By the time Pidge announced she had enough data Shiro's body felt light from laughing so much, and also, weirdly, more like his own than it had in – maybe years.

"Thanks, guys," he said when he got back up to the control booth. "I really needed that."

Without warning Pidge flung herself at him and held onto him tightly. Hunk said, "Group hug!" and grabbed Shiro from the other side, just as tightly. Shiro relaxed as he held onto both of them.

"And listen," said Pidge when the hug ended, sounding as if she was picking up a conversation already in progress, "if you really want my opinion about the Keith thing, here it is: you're both idiots."

Shiro shook his head. "There isn't a Keith thing, Pidge."

" _Idiots_ ," said Pidge firmly.

 

The day had been so consistently weird that Shiro was almost expecting it when Allura paged him after dinner and said, " _Shiro, could we talk in private? I'm in my sitting room._ "

Allura's role as a major alien diplomat meant she had a bigger suite of rooms than the rest of them – she hosted heads of state in her sitting room, and most of them gave her presents, so there was a nice carpet and a shelf of pretty ornaments and a large golden statue of a duck for some reason. The couches were comfortable, though. Shiro said, "Hello, princess."

"Hello, Shiro," Allura said. "I hope I haven't interfered with your plans for the evening."

"Not to worry. I didn't have any."

"I just wanted to see how you were," said Allura. She smiled hopefully at him. "Things have been so busy. I know you've had a very hard time with all of, well, of everything. Are you doing well?"

"Very well, Allura," Shiro said. He felt warmed by her earnest expression and her measured formality and most of all by the way she'd clearly set aside this time to check on him. Sometimes it was very clear how thoroughly Allura's whole life had been aimed towards leadership. "I'm eating better, I'm sleeping better, I'm feeling better. I won't say it's all been easy, but – with friends like all of you around me, how could I not be well?"

Allura nodded seriously. "I still wanted to ask," she said. "Sometimes even the best friends in the world can't fix everything."

Shiro considered that seriously, as it deserved, and said honestly, "No. And not everything is fixed. But I'm glad I'm alive and glad I'm here."

"I am too," said Allura with emphasis. "We _all_ are. You deserve to live a wonderful life, Shiro – for everything you've done for the universe, and for everything you _are_."

"Thank you," Shiro said. What else could you say?

"And how is Keith?"

Shiro said, "Keith's… fine?"

The very faintest of frowns appeared between Allura's delicate brows. "Shiro," she began.

There was a loud rat-a-tat knock on the door. Allura and Shiro both looked up just as Lance walked in. He'd put on a shirt that looked like it had seen an _ironing board_ at some point and Shiro thought he was trying very hard to stand up straight. "Hey, Allura, sorry to just burst in on you, I wondered if – oh," he said, spotting Shiro.

"Don't worry, Lance," said Shiro, standing up with a smile. "I was just leaving. I'll let you two talk."

Allura made a noise of polite protest, and Lance although he looked like he wanted to die said, "You really don't have to –"

"No, I just remembered I had plans for the evening after all," Shiro said. He plucked the note cards neatly out of Lance's hand on his way out. "You don't need these," he said quietly, with a hand on Lance's shoulder. "Just say what you need to say. Follow your heart."

Lance gulped.

"Good night!" Shiro said loudly, and as the door closed behind him he heard Lance say nervously, "Allura – " just as Allura said, "Lance –"

 

Shiro was grinning a bit to himself as he walked down the hall away from Allura's quarters. He dropped Lance's note cards safely into recycling when he passed the chute.

Then a shadowy figure dressed all in black leaped out of the next closet he walked past and dragged him back into the dark. It slammed Shiro against the closet's back wall with a blade pressed against his throat and a hand over his mouth.

"Be quiet," she hissed.

Shiro's heart was racing with sudden panicky adrenalin. His body _knew_ what he thought of unexpected Galra grabbing him and pinning him. But what he could make out of Krolia's face in the dark looked troubled, not deadly; and in any case, Shiro could believe a lot of things, but he couldn't believe that Keith's mom was capable of treachery. No one in their right mind could hurt Keith like that.

Krolia confirmed it by saying, "I just realised what this looks like," with slight ruefulness and lowering her blade. Then she frowned down at Shiro and put her hand back over his mouth. "But you listen to me," she said.

Shiro narrowed his eyes to indicate how unimpressed he was, but nodded.

"I love my son," said Krolia. "I missed his childhood, but I love my son. I spent two years in a time slip with him and they were the two most precious years I will ever know. We had no one to speak to but each other. We walked in each other's memories time and again. I love my son, and now at last after all these years I _know_ my son. So I want to be very, very clear with you, _Shiro_."

She let Shiro go, and backed off a step so she became only a tall dark silhouette outlined in the half-open doorway of the closet. "If you hurt him," she said in a low poisonous growl – the Galra growl, with threat harmonics woven all the way through it – "I will kill you."

Shiro closed his eyes.

He hadn't really talked about it, with the others, but his memories were… doubled. Layered. He remembered being part of the black lion. He couldn't have said for how long, because time hadn't really meant very much in that – space? Existence? Plane of reality? But he remembered.

He _also_ remembered everything his body remembered. _This_ body, which wasn't his original one. Shiro wasn't sure the others knew that. He wasn't sure either if they realised – the imposter hadn't known what he was. The imposter had thought he was the real Shiro right up to the end.

He'd _felt_ like himself. He remembered being himself the whole time.

It made his head hurt and his chest clench when he thought about it, so he tried not to think about it. But he remembered the witch telling him a truth she'd seen. That Shiro made Keith _vulnerable_. That Shiro could hurt him. He remembered knowing he could hurt Keith and knowing he was going to do it – to hurt him, to kill him.

He remembered hurting Keith.

"I understand," he said to the shadow-shape of Krolia. "I'd take myself out first, but if I can't then I hope you do."

Krolia tilted her head. Shiro thought she was considering him. Galra had good low-light vision: she could probably see him just fine even though he was standing in a dark closet. He wondered what she was seeing.

After a moment Krolia said slowly, "What… do you think we're talking about?"

"Well," said Shiro.

"Why are you talking to a closet?" said a voice in the hallway.

Krolia froze – even silhouetted Shiro could see her tension – and said, "No reason, Keith."

"Don't _no reason_ me, who's in there?" said Keith, and then he was opening the closet door the rest of the way and Shiro was squinting against the sudden flood of light. Keith turned to Krolia and said in a tone that somehow combined fury, resignation, and extreme embarrassment, " _Mom."_

Shiro saw the brief look of conflicted delight on her face when he said it. Now he thought about it, Keith didn't call Krolia _mom_ all that often. She recovered impressively fast and said with aplomb, "Shiro and I were just having a friendly chat."

"In a darkened supply closet," said Keith flatly, and looked at Shiro.

_Sorry, Keith_. "That's right," Shiro said with a smile. Krolia blinked as if she hadn't expected him to come to her rescue. "We were discussing Galra night vision. We need to understand each other's capabilities if we're going to work together."

Keith gave them both a narrow glare. "Are you serious?" he demanded.

Neither of them answered him.

Keith snorted. "Fine. Be like that. Enjoy your _chat_."

"I think we're done, actually," said Krolia. She glanced at Shiro. Her expression was a little strange. "I learned a lot. Thank you, Shiro."

"You're welcome," said Shiro. Krolia stepped aside so he could get back out to the hall. He didn't even remember where he'd been going after he left Allura's rooms. Back to his own bed, he supposed.

Keith glanced at him and said, "Aren't you coming?"

"I," said Shiro. "Sure."

 

"Sorry about my mom," said Keith. They'd ended up in Keith's room. Keith was slumped in the desk chair with his bare feet on the bed, propped on the pillow. Shiro was on the rest of the bed with his hands behind his head. His feet weren't far from Keith's, though he hadn't actually shoved them on the pillow because that seemed a little rude. Keith's cosmic wolf jumped up and made himself comfortable under the crook of Shiro's knee.

Shiro had spent quite a lot of time here since their return to Earth. He wouldn't have expected it. After the cloning facility, after everything, if he'd expected to live at all he would have thought that any easiness between them was over for good.

But he'd woken up alive when he'd known he was dead and collapsed into Keith's arms and somehow everything _was_ easy. Easier, if anything, than it had ever been.

Shiro sometimes thought that those two years in the spacetime rift had changed Keith in more ways than just the extra muscle he'd put on. ( _We had basically nothing to do but work out,_ Keith had said once. _Push-ups and sword drills, you know._ ) He was calmer, somewhere deep down, than he'd once been. Steadier in his skin. He was the Black Paladin through and through now, with none of the nervy loose-cannon energy that Shiro associated with Red – or, no, it was still _there_ , but it flowed smoothly now. Not all the time, Keith was still _Keith_ , but on a mission he was every inch the leader.

Shiro tried not to think too much about how extremely distinct the lions' personalities were in his head these days. He was pretty sure that if Keith as he was now offered himself to Red, Red would sniff and turn him down.

In any case Keith was probably the person Shiro spent the most time with since the destruction of the Castle of Lions. It was just straightforward to be around him, in a way it hadn't been with the others, especially to begin with.

Shiro couldn't have said exactly when he looked at that feeling and thought, _oh._ Once he knew it was there, he couldn't stop knowing. The well of it ran deep, so deep it must have been there for much longer than Shiro had ever known. When you were fighting to defend the universe, when was there _time?_

"She's just, you know," Keith was saying, "she regrets missing out on some stuff in my life." He shrugged. Oh, he was still talking about Krolia.

"I get that," said Shiro.

"Sorry," said Keith again.

"She loves you," said Shiro. "She can threaten me in supply closets as much as she likes if that's why she's doing it."

Keith flashed a little smile. "You really don't want to give Krolia licence to go around issuing threats, Shiro. Trust me."

"I do," Shiro said. "Because you deserve that. You deserve to have people looking out for you, loving you."

Keith was quiet for a moment. Shiro poked the cosmic wolf's ruff with his bare toes. It snapped lazily at them – not an actual threat, just a reminder that Shiro wasn't Keith and he'd better watch his manners. "Sorry," Shiro told it.

"You do too," said Keith.

"What?"

"Deserve it," said Keith, looking seriously at him. "People who look out for you. People who love you."

Shiro let the words settle inside him. He knew he'd keep them safe there for a long time, and not just because it was Keith who'd said them. "I know," he answered, when he could. "And – I realise that I have that. In all of you. I know I do."

"As long as you know it," Keith said.

"You're still worrying about me?" said Shiro.

"I think I'm going to worry about you for the rest of my life," said Keith.

Then he went pink and stood up and pretended he was looking for the cosmic wolf's brush, the one Hunk had built that resonated with its peculiar frequencies so it couldn't just teleport away from being groomed. Shiro sat up. "Keith," he said.

"You knew that," said Keith, without looking at him. "Shiro, come on, there's no way you didn't know that." He found the brush – right out in plain sight in the middle of the desk – and picked it up.

Shiro swallowed. He said, "You know, I had a really weird day."

"Because my mom threatened you in a supply closet?" said Keith, but he turned and met Shiro's eyes again and gave him a rueful grin.

"That was part of it," said Shiro. "But also Allura said I deserved a wonderful life, Pidge called me an idiot, Hunk told me to take more risks, Lance said I should follow my heart, and I think Coran told me to practise safe sex."

Keith's eyes went wide while Shiro was talking and then he choked when Shiro got to Coran. "He _what_."

"Like I said," said Shiro, smiling at him. "Weird day."

"Shiro –"

"Keith, listen, maybe I've got this all wrong, and if I have then I'm sorry," Shiro said. He thought about Lance showing up at Allura's quarters with his white-knuckled grip on his note cards and his ironed shirt. Having a set of notes to read from would have been a big help just now. But Keith was still staring at him.

"I, uh, have feelings for you," Shiro said. It seemed like a pretty inadequate way to talk about that well of emotion inside him. He'd asked Keith to take the mantle of the Black Paladin from him. He'd looked down at Keith and known he was going to kill him. He'd woken up alive when he'd known he was dead, and Keith had been there, holding on. Shiro didn't know how to say it, so he said, "I have feelings for you," again, and swallowed. "And if there's any chance that you could – for me – " and he had to swallow again, his mouth was too dry. He was losing it. He really did need note cards.

"Are you _joking,_ " Keith whispered.

Shiro frowned. "I wouldn't joke about something this important."

Keith said, " _Shiro_."

And then suddenly Keith was _on_ Shiro, knocking all the breath out of him as they collided, his body compact and muscular and _heavy_ , a real solid weight. That was what it meant to be alive: that things had weight, that people could hold you. Keith was taking hold of Shiro now, sliding his arms around him. Shiro lifted both hands to hold him too, the one that was his and the one he was still getting used to. This felt like a risk. It was a risk worth taking.

Keith looked down at him, his dark eyes very close. He licked his lips. Shiro watched that, and then realised he was looking at Keith's mouth and not his eyes, and flicked his gaze back up. Keith made a sound like he was being strangled and shoved Shiro down onto the blankets and kissed him.

Eventually the cosmic wolf teleported up onto the bed next to them and shoved its cold nose inquisitively into Shiro's ear.

But until then it was a perfect kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr!](http://emilyenrose.tumblr.com)


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